Sid Meier's Civilization VII is the newest mainline entry in Firaxis' long-running 4X strategy series, which is built on exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating across procedurally generated maps. Taken on its own, each campaign remains a superbly engaging escapade across eras that will keep you playing for "one more turn" until you realize you're late for your sister's birthday party. Civilization VII is not just a game that you play to pass the time during weekends--the experience is compelling enough that it is the weekend, and maybe several weekdays of your life, too.
For Civilization VII, Firaxis has made some sweeping changes, most notably with how you progress through each historical period. Several of these new features are welcome, given that they address concerns from previous titles while also making campaigns more dynamic. However, a few design decisions are bound to be contentious, especially for longtime fans, since these mechanics tend to impact the player's control over certain outcomes.
One of the biggest changes in Civilization VII is how you choose leaders and nations separately. Gone are the days when picking Augustus Caesar or Napoleon meant automatically playing as Rome or France, respectively. Instead, leaders have a unique trait that defines their playstyle, and you can select a country independently to complement that playstyle.
For instance, Hatshepsut's trait--God's Wife of Amun--grants bonuses from imported resources and navigable rivers, while starting close to those same rivers, no less. Naturally, as Pharaoh, you would think that Egypt, which also grants extra production on rivers, would be the best civ choice for Hatshepsut. That might be true, but you could opt to try others, such as the Maya for their science bonuses or Maurya for their additional pantheon belief.
This concept is brilliant as it offers unparalleled flexibility in how you approach each playthrough. It also gives you the opportunity to strategize right from the get-go: Should you pick leaders and nations that complement one another well, even if it leads to a more rigid path, or should you go against the grain to come up with surprising combinations?
Likewise, there's an account-based progression system where you earn Mementos that can be equipped by leaders, giving them beneficial perks such as additional skill points or increased yields. (These can be optionally disabled in multiplayer.) One noteworthy inclusion is the Complaint to Ea-nāṣir--a tablet from ancient Babylon that's considered by the Guinness Book of World Records as the "oldest written customer complaint"--which provides an Economic attribute point for selected leaders.
The Memento system is certainly an interesting idea that rewards those who like to "main" a particular character. In my case, I played several matches as Jose Rizal, a national hero of the Philippines. Rizal's unique trait grants better rewards from narrative events--new quest chains for each leader, further enriching the roleplaying aspect as you learn more about these historical figures. Since he has a generalist playstyle, I was free to aim for conquest, scientific breakthroughs, or other means of advancement, tackling a plethora of missions and leveling him up as I went along.
The gameplay in Sid Meier's Civilization VII should feel both fresh and familiar to veterans of the series and other 4X strategy titles. At the start of a match in the Antiquity Age (which replaces the Ancient Era and Classical Era), you found your capital city and send Scouts to explore your surroundings. Scouts even have a new action that reveals nearby ruins that grant advantageous benefits, making the search for "goodie huts" as hassle-free as it gets.
From there, you send out your Settlers to create settlements as you expand across the continent, while also exploiting resource nodes around you. A notable change in Civilization VII compared to its predecessors is that newly founded settlements aren't cities but small towns with specializations, somewhat akin to colony planets in Stellaris. You can, eventually, turn towns into cities, which poses more questions that reinforce the game's strategic depth--do I want this large town to continue specializing in a particular function, or should I turn it into a city so I could be more hands-on with its development?
Growing your cities and towns in Civilization VII is now significantly more streamlined. You no longer need to worry about Worker units (they're completely gone). Instead, you just click on a tile and a specific improvement, be it a mine, plantation, farm, or camp, is plopped down instantly for free. You can even pair buildings with one another, creating a quarter (i.e. district) that provides bonuses, as well as build over them with more advanced facilities in later eras--yet another facet that should get yield min-maxers excited.
These strategic layers further extend to how you take down your opponents through the Commander system, which replaces Great Generals and Great Admirals. Now, Commanders can "pack" several units within them--perhaps a nod to the old "doomstacks" from earlier Civ games--and enact combined-arms attacks so multiple units can simultaneously strike the same target. Furthermore, units no longer gain skill points, but Commanders do, and their perks affect all those within their radius. Similarly to how you expand settlements, this streamlined process is excellent as it decreases the need to micromanage multiple units by the mid- and late-game stages.
Meanwhile, the revamped diplomacy system, where influence plays a bigger role, now includes treaties, espionage activities, war support, and actions related to independent peoples/city-states. For instance, if you're lagging behind an opponent, you can incite city-states to raid their lands, while you steal their technologies and cause their war-weariness to spiral out of control. Each of the core 4X gameplay mechanics shine, leading to exhilarating moments where you have to use all available tools to succeed.
The experience is made even more memorable by gorgeous visuals. The map itself comes to life thanks to breathtaking environments, thematic unit designs, and settlements that showcase your chosen nation's cultural aesthetics. For instance, the buildings in a Shawnee city look vastly different from those in settlements owned by the Mongolians, Ming Chinese, or Songhai. Civilization VII is the type of game that invites you to zoom in and marvel at the details of smaller settlements that have turned into bustling metropolises with distinct architecture and art.
As mentioned earlier, the biggest, and likely to be the most contentious change in Sid Meier's Civilization VII, is how you progress through each era. In previous games, each campaign is long, drawn-out, and contiguous--you were stuck with the same nation for the rest of your playthrough. Now, the game's eras--Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern--exist as completely separate time periods, each with its own civs, buildings, wonders, crisis events, and progression milestones. Perhaps most surprisingly, you're also required to switch to a different civ upon entering the Exploration Age and the Modern Age.
The concept of changing from one civ to the next in each era isn't completely new--it's akin to Humankind, a 4X strategy title from Amplitude Studios and Sega. This idea, both on paper and in practice, revitalizes the old Civilization formula, creating a more dynamic approach that encourages you to plan an overarching strategy for the rest of the campaign. Coincidentally, one of Humankind's pitfalls was that cultures lacked distinct properties in spite of a plethora of combinations. This drawback isn't as pronounced in Civilization VII, as each leader still has a unique identity and agenda, even if titles may seem a bit weird--e.g. Benjamin Franklin of the Normans or Himiko, High Shaman of Aksum.
In one of my campaigns as Xerxes I of Persia, I constructed monuments, altars, and ancient wonders like the Pyramids and Angkor Wat. I also had to contend with a crisis that involved ultra-aggressive independent peoples, akin to the "Raging Barbarians" setting from previous games. I then followed Legacy Paths, objectives that nudged me along a steady progression, such as gathering a bunch of codices (Scientific Legacy) and founding several settlements (Military Legacy).
Then, when the Antiquity Age gave way to the Exploration Age, I opted to benefit from the Abbasids' science boons. I constructed Machu Picchu and the Forbidden City, while replacing monuments and altars with universities and kilns. Along the way, I had to stem the devastating effects of another crisis, the Black Death, which wiped out many citizens of my empire. As these events happened all around me, I tackled objectives that included sending treasure fleets from distant lands (Economic Legacy) and spreading my Zoroastrian religion to gain relics (Cultural Legacy). All these tasks might sound overwhelming, but they made for unbelievably riveting campaigns, giving a glimpse into how empires rose, fell, adapted, and survived through the course of our shared human history.
Each feature in Civilization VII, taken on its own, is a treat for veterans like myself who want to see the series' continued evolution. Sadly, these also lead to some of the more egregious problems I've ever seen in a 4X title.
The first key issue pertains to forced civ-switching in relation to unlock conditions. Unlike in Humankind, where all period-specific cultures are available but it's a race to see which player picks them first, the options in Civilization VII have strict unlock requirements. Case in point: You can only play as the Abbasids if you picked Egypt or Persia beforehand, or if you were able to improve three camel resource nodes. As for Qing China, you can only get them if you chose Ming China earlier or have three tea plantations. Sometimes, you have no control over meeting these requirements or doing so just isn't feasible. After all, you might not have access to the correct resource or the locations aren't that optimal due to procedural generation on maps. That means you're out of luck and you need to decide based on a very limited selection pool. This is a confounding design decision given that leaders, nations, and Legacy Paths offer a lot of flexibility, and yet swapping to another civ, by far the most important choice you make in each campaign, counterintuitively follows rigid rules.
This is compounded by the fact that there are noticeable gaps and omissions among the currently available countries. A good example is how Rome and Greece are in the game, but Byzantium--the successor empire that combines the cultures of both--is missing, as are Great Britain (which will be part of an upcoming DLC), the Ottomans, the Aztecs, modern-day India, and any Scandinavian nation, for that matter. I was also perplexed when I saw that Jose Rizal of the Philippines unlocked Hawaii, of all countries, as there is no available option among Southeast Asian nations that had anti-colonial struggles. Vietnam isn't a civ but is represented by Trung Trac (leader), while Indonesia is represented by Majapahit (Exploration Age). Siam/Thailand is the only Modern Age Southeast Asian civ, though the country was never colonized by a European power.
Another factor to consider is that each era transition is basically a soft reset for all players. Once the progress meter hits 100% due to turn advancements or Legacy milestones, all construction projects, wonders, and related missions end abruptly--for everyone. One moment, you might be actively participating and enjoying tasks like sending out treasure fleets or spreading your religion far and wide, and the next, those mechanics are gone for good. Even all your units, regardless of where they might be, are removed from the map, only for period-specific variants to spawn randomly across your empire at the start of the next age. The concept itself would be the equivalent of Mehmed the Conqueror arriving at the gates of Constantinople, only to get magically teleported to Edirne because the Aztecs discovered the last holy relic that they needed.
This may have been implemented to curb the "snowballing" effect so everyone can be on a somewhat level playing field again. Still, this feels like being punished for doing too well, and is likely to impact aggressive and competitive players significantly.
Sadly, Civilization VII also feels incomplete. The Modern Age simply encompasses the industrial period up to Yuri Gagarin's space flight in the 1960s. The most advanced military units are tanks and fighter planes, and there's no Information/Contemporary Age whatsoever. Granted, Civilization campaigns tend to turn into unbearable slogs upon reaching later stages that many players don't even finish their games. Still, removing a historical period in its entirety doesn't feel like the best solution.
Furthermore, I've noticed a few issues with the user interface that confounded me initially. These include panels that don't explain how merchants are utilized, as well as the usage of civ-specific Great People on hexes--in a few instances, I had to mouse over several tiles in my cities since the correct spots weren't highlighted at all. Speaking of buildings, I've also seen how civ-specific facilities can't be constructed on certain tiles and, without the option to remove what I've built beforehand, I was unable to complete certain quarters.
Sid Meier's Civilization VII's "one more turn" aspect is still as engaging as ever, and I enjoyed huge portions of my playthroughs. Several facets, such as those related to diplomacy, espionage, crises, and combat address long-standing concerns. Legacy Paths and narrative events, meanwhile, offer rich and rewarding avenues for advancement through the ages. Unfortunately, as someone who's seen the heights that previous series entries have reached, the vanilla Civilization VII experience still needs a few tweaks, as it's held back by the aforementioned issues that occur during brief but crucial era transitions. Granted, the changes this series has undergone over the years--whether it's the square tiles or hexes debate, the "one unit per tile" drama, or city-planning with districts--have been for the better, eventually. The issues deemed controversial or cumbersome at the start paved the way for a better overall experience. As such, even if Civilization VII has a strong foundation, we might not see the game's full potential until much later in its lifespan. But, hey: At least the franchise has been consistent in that regard.
